In Wednesday editions, the Contra Costa Times editorial board recommended that Cal athletic director Sandy Barbour “start looking for another job” if the football program’s atrocious graduation rates and academic scores don’t show marked improvement.

I’ll piggyback off that editorial with some thoughts on Barbour’s job performance …

In the past year, I’ve reported extensively on two big issues involving Cal athletics: The declining academic performance and the fragile state of Memorial Stadium financing. (Links to all stories/Hotline posts on the subjects are below.)

While discussing the state of Cal athletics, I often get the same reaction from industry sources — people with a deep understanding of, and passion for, college sports. And that reaction is this:

How does Sandy Barbour still have her job?

My answer: It’s complicated.

The issues are complicated, which makes a fair, reasoned assessment of Barbour’s performance as athletic director somewhat difficult.

Is she wholly, partly or not-at-all to blame for the budget mess?

For the exorbitant cost of the facility upgrades and the flawed financing model behind the projects?

What about the humiliating graduation rates and Academic Progress Rate scores?

Barbour, who was hired in 2004, has detractors on campus and within the Cal athletic constituency at large, and I can’t help but think that adversely affects her ability to make positive change and significant progress.

She wants the best for Cal and its student athletes — of that there is no doubt.

And I would argue that her mistakes on fiscal matters are, to some extent, rooted in her desire to create the best possible experience for Cal’s student athletes.

Also beyond dispute: She has a difficult job.

The AD post at Cal is one of the toughest in the Pac-12 because of the state budget crisis, soaring tuition (i.e. scholarship costs), UC bureaucracy, an unwieldy (albeit commendable) number of NCAA-sponsored sports, the cost of living for coaches, the cost of construction, the cramped campus …

I could go on and on.

But we’ve reached the point that Barbour’s job performance and future at the school require a fair, honest public examination.

At the No. 1-ranked public university in the country, they are off the charts.

And Barbour is the boss.

So what’s fair? Let’s take it issue-by-issue:

*** It’s fair to assign Barbour some, but not all the responsibility for the budget mess that nearly forced Cal to eliminate four sports and demote a fifth.

Her predecessor, Steve Gladstone, spent freely — the Bears didn’t start relying on millions in direct campus support when Barbour took over. And the administration (i.e., former chancellor Robert Birgeneau) allowed it to happen.

But the amount of direct institutional support essentially tripled under Barbour’s watch even though revenues increased by less than 50 percent.

(Other schools in the conference marveled at Cal’s free-spending ways. I know, because I’ve spoken to officials at many of them.)

It was not sound management on Barbour’s part.

*** The immensely flawed stadium financing model is not her responsibility — that falls on the shoulders of former VC Nathan Brostrom and Birgeneau.

She failed to implement a sound method of accounting for the sales, then helped mislead the public.

*** The cost of the stadium and the training center also falls on Barbour — not entirely but to a considerable degree.

Despite the price tag, she pushed for the upgrades that were ultimately approved by the administration and the Regents.

And the price tag is stunning: Cal spent more on facility upgrades ($474 million) than any school in the history of collegiate athletics.

Sure, a portion of that was unavoidable. But even when you back out the cost of the seismic retrofit, Cal still spent approx $250 million.

Bottom line: No university has ever spent more on an athletic facility than the athletic director felt comfortable with.

Had Barbour said to Birgeneau, Brostrom and the Regents, “I’m not sure the price tag is manageable for us going forward,” then Cal would not have spent $474 million.

When I asked Barbour about the project’s cost while reporting my June series on the financing, she staunchly defended the price tag.

(Vice Chancellor John Wilton, who was hired two years ago and is charged with fixing the fiscal disaster, responded differently: “That’s a good question,” he said.)

As with the budget mess, the stadium/training center project seems to indicate a lack of fiscal discipline on Barbour’s part.

And taken together … especially when compared to the decisions made by other schools in the conference over the past decade … the budget mismanagement and facility costs show an inability on Barbour’s part to properly consider the consequences of the spending.

*** As for the abysmal graduation rates, let’s be clear: That is entirely on Barbour.

Sure, Jeff Tedford was in charge of the football program and Mike Montgomery the basketball program.

But Barbour is the boss; Barbour had access to all the academic progress data before and during the GSR collapse; and Barbour was responsible for making sure something like this did not happen.

That it has gotten to this point — in football: the worst in all the major conferences — is astounding and inexcusable.

Remember: The grad rates are an annual calculation and somewhat of a lagging indicator: The data released last week tracked student-athletes whose six-year graduation window closed in the spring of 2012 — we’re 18 months behind.

But like every school, Cal has access to more accurate tracking data in the form of the single-year APR scores.

While the public wasn’t aware of the football team’s GSR plunge into the 40-percent range until Oct. ’12, the Bears’ single-year APR scores were already off the cliff.

Year released: GSR/single-year APR

2011: 54/921
2012: 48/923
2013: 44/923

And yet, it wasn’t until Oct. ’12 — that’s a full 18 months after the 921 APR bottoming and years after the scores had begun their decline to unacceptable levels — that Cal announced steps “recently taken” to rectify the problem.

From this vantage point, it’s clear that Barbour was too slow to react to the GSR deterioration.

*** Where does this leave us?

Chancellor Nicholas Dirks has been on the job for five months and, so far as I know, hasn’t uttered a public peep about Barbour’s job performance.

But examined in its totality, her tenure has been, at best, a mixed bag.

The football team flourished for several years under a coach she did not hire, then collapsed on her watch — and remains in the gutter.

The stadium was renovated during her tenure, but the Regents gave Cal no choice: Make it safe for the public, or play somewhere else.

She hired Mike Montgomery and has made several shrewd decisions with Olympic sport coaches. The women’s basketball team, for example, has flourished.

Her passion for Cal’s student athletes … and for creating an environment in which they can thrive … is beyond dispute.

But her biggest failings are, as I noted at the top, on the biggest of all possible issues.

She is partly and/or largely responsible for the budget issues and the frightful stadium financing situation, and she is wholly responsible for the GSR debacle.

Cal’s highest-profile sports not only embarrassed the university but failed the academic mission at the core of their existence.

All of which is grounds for reasonable observers to wonder not how Barbour still has a job, but how long she’ll have it.